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Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Atomic!
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Atomic!

Author: Henry Kuttner

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: May 25, 2022 [eBook #68167]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Standard Magazines, Inc, 1947

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Alex White & the online
Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
https://www.pgdpcanada.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATOMIC! ***

ATOMIC!
 By HENRY KUTTNER

Illustrated by Virgil Finlay.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

What nuclear war may do to the world

we know is a closed book to mankind—but
here’s what coming eras may bring!
 CHAPTER I
The Eye
The alarm went off just after midnight. The red signal showed
emergency. But it was always emergency at first. We all knew that.
Ever since the arachnid tribe in the Chicago Ring had mutated we’d
known better than to take chances. That time the human race had
very nearly gone under. Not many people knew how close we’d been
to extinction. But I knew.
Everybody in Biological Control Labs knew. To anyone who lived
before the Three-Hour War such things would have sounded
incredible. Even to us now they sound hard to believe. But we know.
There are four hundred and three Rings scattered all over the world
and every one of them is potentially deadly.
Our Lab was north of what had been Yonkers and was a deserted,
ruinous wilderness now. The atomic bomb of six years ago hadn’t hit
Yonkers of course. What it struck was New York. The radiation
spread far enough to wipe out Yonkers and the towns beyond it, and
inland as far as White Plains—but everyone who lived through the
Three-Hour War knows what the bomb did in the New York area.
The war ended incredibly fast. But what lingered afterward made the
real danger, the time-bomb that may quite easily lead to the wiping
out of our whole civilization. We don’t know yet. All we can do is
keep the Labs going and the planes out watching.
That’s the menace—the mutations.
It was familiar stuff to me. I recorded the televised report on the
office ticker, punched a few buttons and turned around to look at Bob
Davidson, the new hand. He’d been here for two weeks, mostly
learning the ropes.
My assistant, Williams, was due for a vacation and I had about
decided to take young Davidson on as a substitute.
“Want to go out and look it over, Dave?” I asked.
“Sure. That’s a red alarm, isn’t it? Emergency?”
I pulled a mike forward.
“Send up relief men,” I ordered, “and wake Williams to take over. Get
the recon copter ready. Red flight.” Then I turned to Davidson.
“It’ll be routine,” I told him, “unless something unexpected happens.
Not much data yet. The sky-scanners showed a cave-in and some
activity around it. May be nothing but we can’t take chances. It’s
Ring Seventy-Twelve.”
“That’s where the air liner crashed last week, isn’t it?” Dave asked,
looking up with renewed interest. “Any dope yet on what became of
the passengers?”
“Nothing. The radiations would have got them if nothing else did.
That’s in the closed file now, poor devils. Still, we might spot the
ship.” I stood up. “The whole thing may be a wild-goose chase but
we never take any chances with the Rings.”
“It ought to be interesting, anyhow,” Dave said and followed me out.
We could see it from a long way off. Four hundred and three of them
dot the world now, but in the days before the War no one could have
imagined such a thing as a Ring and it would be hard to make
anyone visualize one through bare description. You have to feel the
desolation as you fly over that center of bare, splashed rock in which
nothing may ever grow again until the planet itself disintegrates, and
see around that dead core the violently boiling life of the Ring.
It was a perimeter of life brushed by the powers of death. The sun-
forces unleashed by the bombs gave life, a new, strange, mutable
life that changed and changed and changed and would go on
changing until a balance was finally struck again on this world which
for three hours reeled in space under the blows of an almost cosmic
disaster. We were still shuddering beneath the aftermath of those
blows. The balance was not yet.
 From time to time we work them over with flame throwers

When the hour of balance comes, mankind may no longer be the

dominant race. That’s why we keep such a close watch on all the
Rings. From time to time we work them over with flame-throwers.
Only atomic power, of course, would quiet that seething life
permanently—which is no solution. We’ve got Rings enough right
now without resorting to more atom bombs.
It’s a hydra-headed problem without an answer. All we can do is
watch, wait, be ready....
The world was still dark. But the Ring itself was light, with a strange,
pale luminous radiance that might mean anything. It was new. That
was all we knew about it yet.
“Let’s have the scanner,” I said to Davidson. He handed me the
mask and I pushed the head-clips past my ears and settled the
monocular view-plate before my eyes, expecting to see the darkness
melt into the reversed vision of the night-scanner.
It melted, all right—the part that didn’t matter. I could see the
negative images of trees and ruined houses standing ghostly pale
against the dark. But within the Ring—nothing.
It wasn’t good. It could be very bad indeed. In silence I pulled off the
mask and handed it to Davidson, watched him look down. When he
turned I could see his troubled frown through the monocular lens
even before he lowered the scanner. He looked a little pale in the
light of the instrument board.
“Well?” he asked.
“Looks as if they’d hit on something good this time,” I said.
“They?”
“Who knows? Could be anything this time. You know how the life-
forms shoot up into mutations without the least warning. Something’s
done it again down there. Maybe something that’s been quietly
working away underground for a long time, just waiting for the right
moment. Whatever it is they can stop the scanners and that isn’t an
easy thing to do.”
“The first boys over reported a cave-in,” Davidson said, peering
futilely down. “Could you see anything?”
“Just the luminous fog. Nothing inside. Total blackout. Well, maybe
daylight will show us what’s up. I hope so.”
It didn’t. A low sea of yellow-gray fog billowed slowly in a vast circle
over the entire Ring as far as we could see. Dead central core and
outer circle of unnatural life had vanished together into that mist
which no instrument we had could penetrate—and we’ve developed
a lot of stuff for seeing through fog and darkness. This was solid. We
couldn’t crack it.
“We’ll land,” I told Davidson finally. “Something’s going on behind
that shield, something that doesn’t want to be spied on. And
somebody’s got to investigate—fast! It might as well be us.”
We wore the latest development in the way of lead-suits, flexible and
easy on the body. We snapped our face-plates shut as the ground
came up to meet us and the little Geiger-counter each of us carried
began to tick erratically, like a sort of Morse code mechanically
spelling out the death in the air we sank through.
I was measuring the ground below for a landing when Davidson
grabbed my shoulder suddenly, pointing down.
“Look!” His voice came tinnily through the ear-diaphragms in my
helmet. I looked.
Now this is where the story gets difficult to tell.
I know what I saw. That much was clear to me from start to finish. I
saw an eye looking up through the pale mist at us. But whether it
was an enormous lens far below or a normal-sized eye close to us I
couldn’t have said just then. My distance-sense had stopped
functioning.
I stared into the Eye....
The next thing I remember is sitting in the familiar lab office across
the desk from Williams, hearing myself speaking.
“... no signs of activity anywhere in the Ring. Perfectly normal—”
“There’s that lake, of course,” Davidson interrupted in a
conscientious voice. I looked at him. He was turning his cap over
and over in his hands as he sat there by the wall. His pink-cheeked
face was haggard and there was something strained and dazed in
the glance he turned to meet mine. I knew I looked dazed too.
It was like waking out of a dream, knowing you’ve dreamed, knowing
you’re awake now—but having the dream go on—being powerless to
stop it. I wanted to jump up and slam my fist on the desk and shout
that all this was phony.
I couldn’t.
Something like a tremendously powerful psychic inhibition held me
down. The room swam before me for a moment with my effort to
break free and I met Davidson’s eyes and saw the same swimming
strain in them.
It wasn’t hypnosis.

We don’t win our posts in Bio Control until we’ve been through
exhaustive tests and a lot of heavy training. None of us are
hypnosis-prone. We can’t afford to be. It’s been tried.
We can’t be hypnotized except under very special circumstances
safeguarded by Bio Control itself.
No, the answer wasn’t that easy. It seemed to lie in—myself. Some
door had slammed in the center of my brain, to shut in vital
information that must not escape—yet—under any circumstances at
all.
The minute I hit on that analogy I knew I was on the right trail. I felt
safer and surer of myself. Whatever had happened in that blank
space just passed my instinct was in control now. I could trust that
instinct.
“... break-through, just as the boys reported,” Davidson was saying.
“That must be what started the lake pouring up. Nothing stirring there
now, though. I suppose the regular sky-scanners are watching it?”
His glance crossed mine and I knew he was right. I knew he was
talking to me, not Williams. Of course the lake couldn’t be hidden
now that it was out in plain sight. We couldn’t make a worse mistake
than to rouse interest in ourselves and the lake by telling obvious lies
about it....
What lake?
Like a mirage, swimming slowly back through my mind, the single
memory came. Ourselves, standing on the raw, bare rock of the
deathly Ring-center, looking through a rift of mist like a broad, low
window a mile long and not very high.
The lake was incredibly blue in the dawn, incredibly calm. Beyond it
a wall of cliff stretched left and right beyond our vision, a wall like a
great curtain of rock hanging in majestic folds, pink in the pink dawn,
looming about its perfect image reflected in the mirror of the lake.

The mirage dissolved. That much I could remember—no more.

There was a lake. We had stood on its rocky shore. And then—
what? Reason told me we must have seen something, or heard or
learned something, that made the lake a deadly danger to mankind.
I knew that feel of naked terror deep in my mind must have a cause.
But all I could do now was follow my instinct. The basic human
instincts, I told myself, are self preservation and preservation of the
species. If I rely on that foundation I can’t go wrong....
But—I didn’t know how long I’d been back here. I didn’t know how
much I’d said, or how little—what orders I’d given to my
subordinates, or whether anything in my outward aspect had roused
any suspicion yet.
I looked around—and this time gave a perfectly genuine start of
surprise. Except for Williams and myself the office was quite empty.
In this last bout with my daydreaming memory I must really have lost
touch with things.
Williams was looking at me with—curiosity? Suspicion?
I rubbed my eyes, put weariness in my voice.
“I’m tired,” I said. “Almost dozed off, didn’t I? Well—”
The sound of the ticker behind Williams interrupted my alibi. I knew
in a moment what was happening. A televised report had come into
my own office which my secretary was switching to the ticker for me.
That meant it was important. It also meant—as I had reason to hope
an instant later—that the visor was shut off in my office and the news
clicking directly here for our eyes alone.
Leaning over Williams’ shoulder, I read the tape feeding through.
It read—
UNIDENTIFIED ACTIVITIES IN PROGRESS AROUND
NEW RING LAKE. SUGGEST DESTROYERS WORK
OVER AREA.
FITZGERALD.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Only one thing stood clear
in my mind’s confusion—this must not happen. There was some
terrible, some deadly danger to the whole fabric of civilization if
Fitzgerald’s message reached any other eyes than ours. I had to do
something, fast.
Williams was rereading the tape. He glanced up at me across his
shoulder.
“Fitz is right,” he said. “Of course. Can’t let anything get started down
there. Better wipe it out right now, hadn’t we?”
I said, “No!” so explosively that he froze in the act of reaching for the
interoffice switch.
“Why not?” He stared at me in surprise.
I opened my mouth and closed it again hopelessly, knowing the right
words wouldn’t come. To me it seemed so self-evident I couldn’t
even explain why we must disregard the message. It would be like
trying to tell a man why he mustn’t touch off an atom bomb out of
sheer exuberance—the reasons were so many and so obvious I
couldn’t choose among them.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know.” My voice sounded thick and
unsteady even to me. “Fitz is wrong. Let that lake alone, Williams!”
“You ought to know.” He gave me a strange look. “Still, I’ve got to
record the report. Headquarters will make the final decision.” And he
reached again for the switch.
I’m not sure how far I would have gone toward stopping him. Instinct
deeper than all reason seemed to explode in me in the urgent
forward surge that brought me to my feet. I had to stop him—now—
without delay—taking no time to delve into my mind and dredge up a
reason he would accept as valid.
But the decision was taken out of our hands.
A burst of soundless white fire flashed blindingly across my eyes. It
blotted out Williams, it blotted out the ticker with its innocent, deadly
message. I was aware of a killing pain in the very center of my
skull....

CHAPTER II
The Other Peril
Someone was shaking me.
I sat up dizzily, meeting a stare that I recognized only after what
seemed infinities of slow waking. Davidson, his pink face frightened,
shook me again.
“What happened? What was it? Jim, are you all right? Wake up, Jim!
What was it?”
I let him help me to my feet. The room began to steady around me
but it reeled sharply again when I saw what lay before the ticker, the
tape looping down about him—face down on the floor, blood still
crawling from the bullet hole in his back....
Williams never saw who got him. It must have been the same flash
that blinded me. I felt my cheek for the powder burn that must have
scorched it as the unseen killer fired past my face. I felt only
numbness. I was numb all over, even my brain. But one thing had to
be settled in a hurry.
How much time had elapsed? Had that deadly message gone out
while I lay here helpless? I made it to the ticker in two unsteady
strides. The tape that looped the fallen Williams still bore its
dangerous message.
Whoever fired past my cheek had fired for another reason, then,
than this message. Of course, for how could anyone else have
known its importance? There was a bewildering mystery here but I
had no time to think about it.
I tore off the tape, crumpled it into my pocket. I flipped the ticker
switch and sent a reverse message out as fast as my shaking hand
could operate the machine.
FITZGERALD URGENT URGENT MEET ME AT RING
POST 27 AM LEAVING HEADQUARTERS NOW DO
NOTHING UNTIL I ARRIVE URGENT SIGNED J. OWEN.
Davidson watched me, round-eyed, as I vised for a helicopter. He
put out his hand as I turned toward the door. I forced myself to stop
and think.
“Well?” I said.
He didn’t speak. He only glanced at Williams’ body on the floor.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t kill him. But I might have if that had turned out to
be the only way. There’s trouble at the lake.” I hesitated. “You were
there too, Dave. Do you know what I mean?” I wasn’t quite sure what
I was trying to find out. I waited for his answer.
“You’re the boss,” was all he said. “Still, it wasn’t any mutation that
did—this. It was a bullet. You’ve got to know who shot him, Jim.”
“I don’t though. I blanked out. Something ...” My mind whirled and
then steadied again with a sudden idea. I put a hand to my forehead,
dizzy with trying to remember things still closed to me.
“Maybe something like a mutation had a part in it at that,” I
conceded. “Maybe we’re not alone in wanting to—to keep the lake
quiet. I wonder—could something from the Ring have blanked me
out deliberately, so I wouldn’t see Williams killed?”
But there wasn’t time to follow even that speculation through. I said
impatiently, “The point is, Dave, one man’s death doesn’t mean a
thing right now. The Ring....” I stopped unable to go on. I didn’t need
to.
“What do you want me to do?” Davidson asked. That was better. I
knew I could depend on him, and I might need someone dependable
very soon.
“Take over here,” I said. “I’m going to see Fitzgerald. And listen,
Dave, this is urgent. Hold any messages Fitzgerald sends. Any!
Understand?”
“Check,” he said. His eyes were still asking questions as I went out.
Neither of us could answer them—yet.
The desolation spun past below me, aftermath of the Three-Hour
War, ruined buildings, ruined fields, ruined woods. Far off I could
catch a pale gleam of water beyond the seething edge of the Ring.
I’d been en route long enough to make some sort of order in my
mind—but I hadn’t done it. Evidently more than time would be
required to open the closed doors in my brain. I had been in the Ring
today—I had seen something or learned something there—and
whatever I learned had been of such vital and terrible import that
memory of it was wiped from Davidson’s mind and mine until the
hour came for action.
I didn’t know what hour or what action. But I knew with a deep
certainty that when the time for decision came I would not falter.
Along with the terror and the blackness in my mind went that one
abiding knowledge upon which all my actions now were based. I
could trust that instinct.
Fitzgerald’s copter was waiting. I could see his lead-suited figure,
tiny and far below, pacing up and down impatiently as I dropped
toward him. My copter settled lightly earthward. And for a moment
another thought crossed my mind.
Williams! A man murdered, a man I knew and had worked with. A
man I liked. That should have affected me much more deeply than it
did. I knew why it hadn’t. Williams’ death was unimportant—
completely trivial in the face of the—the other peril that loomed
namelessly, in all its invisible menace, like a shrouded ghost rising
from the lake beyond us.

Fitzgerald was a big blond man with blue eyes and a scar puckering
his forehead, souvenir of our last battle with mutated marmosa in the
Atlanta Ring. His transmitter-disc vibrated tinnily as I got out of the
copter.
“Hello, chief. You got my second message?”
“No. What was it?”
“More funny stuff.” He gestured toward the Ring. “In the lake this
time—signs of life. I can’t make anything out of it.”
I drew a deep breath of relief. Davidson would have stopped that
message. It was up to me now to find a way to keep Fitzgerald quiet.
“We’ll take a look at the lake, then,” I said. “What’s your report?”
“Well....” He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, glancing at
me through his face-plate as if he didn’t quite expect me to believe
him. “It’s a funny place, that lake. I got the impression it was—well,
watching me.
“I know it sounds silly but I have to tell you. It could be important, I
suppose. And then when I was making a second turn over the water
I saw something, in the lake.” He paused. “People,” he added after a
moment.
“What kind of people?”
“I—they weren’t human.”
“How do you know?”
“They weren’t wearing lead suits,” he said simply, glad of a chance to
pin his story down with facts. “I figured they were either not human or
else insane. They heard my ship. And they went into the lake.”
“Swimming?”
“They walked in. Right under the water. And they stayed there.”
“What did they look like?”
“I didn’t get a close look,” he said evasively, his eyes troubled as
they avoided mine.
I was aware of a strange, mounting excitement that swelled in my
throat until I could hardly speak. I jerked my head toward the lake.
“Come on,” I said.
There lay the blue water, moving gently in the breeze. The cliffs like
folded curtains rose beyond it. There was no sign of life in sight as
we crossed the bare, pitted rocks. Fitzgerald eyed me askance as
we clumped toward the water in our heavy lead-lined boots. I knew
he expected doubt from me.
But I knew also that he had told the truth. The lost memory of danger
sent its premonitory shadows through my mind and I believed, dimly,
that I too had seen those aquatic people, sometime in that
immediate past which had been expunged from my brain.
We were halfway across the rocks, our Geiger-counters clicking
noisy warning of the death in the air all around us, when the first of
the lake people rose up before us from behind a ledge of rock.
He was a perfectly normal looking man—except that he stood there
in khaki trousers and shirt, sleeves rolled up, in the bath of potent
destruction which was the very air of the Ring. He looked at us with a
blankness impossible to describe and yet with a strangely avid
interest in his eyes.
When we were half a dozen paces away he raised his arm and,
without changing expression, in a voice totally without inflection, he
spoke.